Erika Falk, the associate program chair for the master's
degree program in communication at the Krieger School of
Arts and Sciences, is the author of Women for President
(University of Illinois Press, 2008).Photo by Kaveh Sardari

Q:Why does equal treatment by the media
matter?A:
"In a presidential campaign, most people learn about the
candidates from the media. But there's a glaring disparity
in the amount of coverage candidates get. I compared
equivalent male and female candidates in eight races
between 1872 and 2004, candidates who polled about the same
or got similar vote totals, and I took experience into
account. Men got twice as many articles written about them
as women. If you aggregate the coverage, the articles about
men were on average 7 percent longer. If you did see an
article about a woman candidate, it would be less
substantial, so you would learn less about her policies.

"With female candidates for president, more of the coverage
is about their character, their personality, their
experience, and less time is given to their issues. You
would expect that a woman running in 1884 might have less
coverage than the equivalent man. But the same thing
happened in 2004. When I looked at the press coverage in
six newspapers of Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's
announcements to run and in the first month after they both
announced, there were 59 stories headlined with 'Obama' and
just 36 with 'Clinton,' even though at the time Clinton was
leading in all the polls.

"There are studies that show in lower-level races women win
just as often as men do, despite the bias in the press. But
how does it affect women's decision to run? The press
describes women as less viable than equivalent men. If
you're a woman thinking about running for office and you
read a lot of press, you might conclude that you have low
chances."—Maria Blackburn